Friday, November 29, 2013

Amway Shenanigans

A reader shares their story and some wise advice.


I was involved in Amway from May 2012 to March 2013. A friend invited me along to a monthly seminar and while I was overwhelmed with the terrible pop music, in-time clapping, positivity overload and promises of achieving my “dreams” and “goals”. Naively, I assumed my friend invited me for my benefit so I signed up that night.

I played ball for a few months (because I still had a shred of optimism), attended most of the functions (including three weekend conventions), bought stuff from the website, listened to the CDs and even hosted a house/launch party. I got put into a good team of normal people who all seemed supportive.

While some of friends knew it was a scam, I ignored them. Heading towards Christmas, reality finally hit. I lost my job momentarily in November and was limping by on my now meagre savings (thanks to all the money I’d spent on Amway). I was forced to look at the most important things to survive - pay rent and buy food – rather than wasting my time with Amway. Because of this reality check, I started to see through the feelgood bullshit of Amway. While they sell you on reaching your “dreams” and “goals”, the harsh reality is most of the money goes to the big guns: the Diamonds, the Oblongs, the Rectangles etc. Most of those who make it already have oodles of money and saving and don’t need Amway, they’re just being greedy.

Those who are students, low-income earners or who don’t have a secure income, Amway can be potentially damaging, spending money you don’t have on something you don’t need. In my time in Amway, I estimated I spent over $2,000 on various stuff and made less than $100. While I found the online shopping part convenient, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper to go down to your local supermarket and buy what you need. While I got my job back in late November, I immediately lost interest after the October conference (as I had to rebuild financially), I took until March to fully quit, mainly because my friend – who was now my “upline” – was away overseas and if I was going to quit, I wanted to do it face-to-face. In the ensuing months, I completely stopped activity: no more CDs, no more shopping, no more functions (I was always able to find a convenient excuse). When the March convention came around, I was upfront with my friend and he was fine with it. I left the convention on the Saturday afternoon and didn’t look back. It was a relief.

Looking back, Amway has had a negative effect on me emotionally. All the feelgood crap, false hope and focus on materialism made me cynical and bitter. Anytime people mention their “dreams” and “goals”, I roll my eyes dramatically. I’m nowhere near as optimistic about life as I was before I joined Amway. The worst part was, had I not been involved with Amway, my brief time out of work would have been more comfortable financially. Like most ‘get rich quick’ schemes, it relies on trickery and lots of materialistic, shallow rubbish. It’s basically saying “money is the only thing that matters.” I call shenanigans. Yes, money is great for peace of mind, but it doesn’t make you happy. If you want financial security, work hard, invest wisely and spend sensibly.


15 comments:

  1. Glad you figured it out. I hope your experience doesn't deter you from having goals and dreams of your own. What they do though is get you to tell them your dream and use it to their advantage. If you begin to question or doubt the system, they will just say "Well what about your dream?" "Don't tell me you are quitting on your dream!" "There's no way you will be able to reach your dream without Amway!" Or some other variety of that. At least your upline didn't give you crap about leaving.

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  2. The problem isn't really all the positive stuff in my opinion, it's actually just the plain fact that they don't teach you actual business skills necessary for building a real private company. So you go and end up spending hordes of money only to come out of an event basically learning how to just be a better person. Not to say that's not a good thing, but it's only an extremely small piece of what you need to learn to make money at this.

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    1. Jason - you're right Amway teaches nothing about running a real business no matter how may fake training sessions they put on. Most people start their own business to make money not to become a better person. Unless you're in Amway.

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  3. Wow, that’s awesome! You figured out the Multi-Level-Marketing scam, if you’re wealthy you’ll build an empire taking advantage of the poor. If you’re poor, well, have a nice time living out on the streets with your dreams and goals and probably very little that you’ll own after your Amway venture!
    Good thing you didn’t last that long, I know someone (a friend of mine), who’s in this and she actually believes she’ll be leaving next year to Florida to start her new life with her Amway fortune. She insists the residual income from this AMWAY-investment will put her on the spot-light and she’ll be ranked as one of the top-five wealthiest Americans for the year of 2014 (she’ll be the Mark Zuckerberg of Amway Global).
    I’ve stopped warning her about the financial limitations involved with this venture to avoid alienating her and thus pushing her away from me completely!
    From what she’s telling me now, their Platinum is telling them that building their business in Florida is a healthy decision…business-wise. Even if this means they’ll have to go without for a while, you know, without a roof over their heads, or food, or security, or a job! As long as they’re building their Amway business, people have lived in dumpsters and eaten from bird-gutters to become GAZILLENARIES in Amway Global.
    I wish her luck and hope she doesn’t get mugged or raped, or even killed now that’ll she’ll be living on the street, all in the name of the great and powerful Amway Global!

    Arnold Pace 1999

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    1. I have an open and true offer to all the Ambots who talk the way your friend does on youtube. The day you are "walking the beaches of the world" (or whatever) I'll kiss your ass on Colorado Blvd on New Years Day (the Rose Bowl Parade 100 million viewers). So far no shit on my lips.

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    2. HAHAHAHAHA, you’re awesome! I know right, now I cannot believe these people are sooo naïve, I mean, how much does one have to lose before we realize making a fortune isn’t something you can make happen overnight? Now I know sometimes our dreams are bigger than we can handle, and sometimes waiting for the right time and place, and people feels like forever. But when is enough-truly ENOUGH! Wealth is something which doesn’t come easy, or at a yearly membership with overtly hyper-positive individuals continuously speaking about what they’re going to buy and what they have always wanted.

      It saddens me to look at my friend sometimes, and it frightens me to hear her too. She actually believes every penny from her full-time job is going to be quadrupled by about a 300%-to-400% interest vested on this company. She acts like she’s running a selective number of stocks, which are nothing but going up, and up, and up…when all she is truly doing is paying membership into an absurdly expensive yacht club! All she does now is talk about so-and-so making $40,000.00 a month, or so-and-so retiring at age 23 with a residual income of $700,000.00 a year plus bonuses trailing up from their limitless legs.

      Sad to say I really thought she was WAAAAY smarter than this. I can’t believe she was the one brainwashed from the both of us. I mean, I’m the slow one from the two! I’m impressed I was able to escape their grasp without a single scratch!


      Arnold Pace 1999

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    3. I wouldn't insult her intelligence with regard to falling victim to this buyers club. The AMOs have put a great deal of money into psychological training to combat any form of doubt. They have spent countless years developing this brainwashing. It is not that the ambot is dumb, it is that AMO have put a considerable amount of effort into their evil schemes.

      You're right about it being an expensive yacht club, except the ambot pays to be in the yacht club, has no boat, has to buy all the boating equipment, and just gets the opportunity to wash the yachts, with a promise of owning one, someday, if they clean it good enough for an undisclosed amount of time.

      -Jerry

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    4. Arnold - when it comes to Amway forget the fortune not coming overnight. It probably ain't coming 25 years from now either!

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    5. Good one Jerry. Amwayis an expensive yacht club minus the yachts, the club, and all the other fun stuff. Amway is expensive without all the fun.

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    6. Hi AnonymousDecember 4, 2013 at 10:20 AM

      Yeah, I know what you mean. Trust me, I’m not trying to, I’m really trying to comprehend what the deal is here. I mean, my friend graduated valedictorian in our high school graduation. She was part of the Honor-Society program all four years in high school. She’s supposed to be a ‘MATH-ADDICT’ from what I remember.

      Now, if we all try REAL HARD to think about it, this kind of math is the easiest type there is! We’re not talking Algebra or Geometry here; we’re talking simple 2+2=4 approach. Maybe the fact I HATE positive made me immune to their love-bombing. I’m one of those people whom hates hope, I hate dreams, I hate everything and anything that defines “HAPPY”. I’m what the Amway people call a true and pure-blood dream-stealer. I go around the world making sure no-one dares to dream on my watch! I’m also rather analytical when it comes to annual spending budgets. I live off an annual spending budget I design at the end of my current year towards the following year. Usually this spending budget takes me a few hours to build and then a few more months to apply into my preceding expenses. There’s a lot in there which functions through monthly inflation and associative rates and stable/or unstable percentages. For example, at the present moment I’m looking at about $12,569.00 for a total expense figure for the year of 2014, which is considerably higher in contrast to my 2013 annual expenses budget, which only consisted of about $11,132.89. Yes, this figure breaks down into mortage, utility bills, insurance, vehicle, miscellaneous, and a reflective figure or amount which takes care of minor emergencies which might not be covered by my additional insurance programs. Most of those EMERGENCY funds are not “UNLIMITED-CAPABLE” and are therefore a fixed account to work from!

      Now, I really did try to sit there and work with these people (I joined them for coffee). I looked at the figures, you know, the numbers, the charts, the probabilities; their estimated results (FORGET THE INSIGNIFICANT TESTIMONIALS-I NEED FACTS TO SUPPORT MY YEARLY BUDGET!). They disputed you HAVE TO WORK HARD, I argued they relinquished their ‘5-10 hours-a week’ to build a steady income assumption with that statement! They insisted ‘if the dream or dreams are big enough’, I reiterated their stance of ‘5-10 hours a week’ of time invested to generate a consumable and sustainable income.

      They never invited me over for coffee again, I guess I’m not a dreamer at heart!

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    7. Hi Anonymous. Thanks for stopping by with our comments! No one dares dream on your watch? Thanks for the giggle!

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  4. When I was with wwdb I was told a ruby made 80-100k a year. I asked how this is possible? Since the avrg ruby in Amway literature made way less. Of course the cult leader responded with wwdb have bigger volume and their diamonds etc made much more money than the rest of Amway. Right then.I thought total horseshit

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    1. Anonymous - its probably only possible if they have another source of income and that's the amount, tallied up with Scamway income or not, that they say they're earning.

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    2. Anna, on the diamond lifestyle videos, it even says in small print in the bottom corner that the diamond's income may be from sources other than Amway such as the tool scam. Of course it doesn't explicitly say it, but that is where a lot of it comes from.

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    3. Anonymous - there's a lot of small print when it comes to Amway.

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Comments are moderated but we publish just about everything. Even brainwashed ambots who show up here to accuse us of not trying hard enough and that we are lazy, quitters, negative, unchristian dreamstealers. Like we haven’t heard that Amspeak abuse from the assholes in our upline!

If your comment didn’t get published it could be one of these reasons:
1. Is it the weekend? We don’t moderate comments on weekends. Maybe not every day during the week either. Patience.
2. Racist/bigoted comments? Take that shit somewhere else.
3. Naming names? Public figures like politicians and actors and people known in Amway are probably OK – the owners, Diamonds with CDs or who speak at functions, people in Amway’s publicity department who write press releases and blogs. Its humiliating for people to admit their association with Amway so respect their privacy if they’re not out there telling everyone about the love of their life.
4. Gossip that serves no purpose. There are other places to dish about what Diamonds are having affairs or guessing why they’re getting divorced. If you absolutely must share that here – don’t name names. I get too many nosy ambots searching for this. Lets not help them find this shit.
5. Posting something creepy anonymously and we can’t track your location because you’re on a mobile device or using hide my ass or some other proxy. I attracted an obsessed fan and one of my blog administrators attracted a cyberstalker. Lets keep it safe for everyone. Anonymous is OK. Creepy anonymous and hiding – go fuck yourselves!
6. Posting something that serves no purpose other than to cause fighting.
7. Posting bullshit Amway propaganda. We might publish that comment to make fun of you. Otherwise take your agenda somewhere else. Not interested.
8. Notice how this blog is written in English? That's our language so keep your comments in English too. If you leave a comment written in another language then we either have to use Google translate to put it into English so everyone can understand what you wrote or we can hit the Delete button. Guess which one is easier for us to do?
9. We suspect you're a troublemaking Amway asshole.
10. Your comment got caught in the spam filter. Gets checked occasionally. We’ll get to you eventually and approve it as long as it really isn’t spam.